What's the most useless skill you've mastered, and how did you end up getting so good at it?
I’ve mastered the ability to take any idea or thought and transform it into anxiety. Jitters McGee
Im a top 1% player in Rocket League after playing for 4500 hours. The skill gap between me and the best players in the game is the same gap as between me and a brand new player.
But i will still beat 99% of the game's population.
Same for me, but with Tetris. I'm not the best, but I'm confident I can handedly beat the vast majority of the population. I spent most of my lockdown days just doing Tetris.
Similar on Splatoon. Before the recent rank reset I was S+6, it blows my mind that people go up to like S+20. But when the season ends, all the S+x ratings reset to S rank, and playing with normal S rank people recently reminded me of that.
Did you mean "handily?" Or "single-handedly," implying some sort of Teamtris?
Yeah same, but with like 2K hours. At some point I was Grand Champion 1 or something. I could probably win against 2 noobs without me using jump and boost, but in the few moments I played against pros I got equally clapped. It's insane to me how much better pro players are.
After Epic bought it the whole game slowly went to shit though. Psyonix once treated the game and its community as their baby, but it just became a soulless money printer without any decent innovation. So I barely play anymore, even though the core game is ultimately still fun.
As an 800 hour player that has to put the game down because of competitiveness making me a curmudgeon -- Wow, gotta say. That's so much work.
Did you use the practice modes to get to be that level or did it just come to you during play?
Played 932h (around 900h actual playtime) and almost exclusively played ranked or rumble/dropshot but never casual.
Best rank was Diamond 2 or 1 not sure anymore.
Played it only on keyboard. No controller ever used.
Gave it up as a sort of protest against the buyout and never went back.
As long as you always play to improve, watch videos to keep up on mechanics/metas, and just immerse yourself in the game, you'll always climb up. If you play at least 2 hours a day, you'll be insane before you know it.
But in the spirit of this post, you could spend your time doing something so much more productive than a video game lol
I turn yaml into aws bills
I wouldn't call that useless. That is how you get to be the executive lead cloud DevOps engineer.
I can read UPC,, UPC-8, ISBN, and EAN bar codes. Tear the numbers off the bottom of the bar code, hand me the lines, and I will tell you the numbers you tore off.
I used to work the midnight shift at a call center back in the late 90s. It was incredibly boring because we weren't allowed to browse the internet when no calls were coming in (which was most of the time, got maybe five calls total per night). So I picked up a copy of Yahoo! Internet Life, a now-defunct technology-centered magazine. This issue had a how-to section for wacky shit like that, so I committed it to memory because wtf else was there to do?
i can roll quarters down my fingers continuously because I saw Val kilmer do it in Real Genius and I wanted to be cool like him.
Ha, I saw Val Kilmer do it in Tombstone and always wanted to do it, but never followed through.
I can fluidly open a trash bag, pull it into a straight line, and toss it like a dart, landing it in an open trash can from up to 30ft.
This only works with those cheap bags that businesses use and this was honed over years of changing trash at various businesses. Not useful, very majestic though.
I can independently write different text with both hands at the same time just as easily as writing with only one hand. I consider this a useless skill because I rarely ever write with an actual pen or pencil, so being able to write with both hands simultaneously doesn’t add anything.
Lots of time being bored in school and an obsession with broadening the mind.
Could you use both hands to write the same sentence twice as fast?
In principle, yes, but this would require some additional effort because of word spacing. The sentence would need to come together and meet at a point.
Basically same. I don't know if being ambidextrous is something you can be born with. I broke arms, wrists, fingers enough that functionality I had to be able to use both hands in school and sports.
I consider this a useless skill
I dont know, friend. thats a bit of a step up from the usual party trick.
best I've got is zero lead hand/leg preference when sparring muay thai. makes me a real lonely or a real popular dance partner depending on the crowd.
Second job overnights at a gas station... Pretty much any combination of right/left hand, upside down/mirrored, cursive/text, words forward/letters backwards, etc.
So this sounded crazy to me, like I’d never be able to do that, I just grabbed paper, a pen in my left hand(I’m right handed) and a pen shaped object in the other(it doesn’t write) I moved both hands at the same time as if writing with both, and my left hand writing is better than I’ve ever seen myself do, when trying to independently write with my left hand.
That’s not useless, a 14th century monastery would love to have you
Thank you! At least it gave me something to show for all that time.
I can clap with one hand
That's pretty useful of you're at a concert holding a beer though!
Oh yeah!
Finally answering the zen question of "what is the sound of one hand clapping?"
I just tried and was successful. I have long fingers which probably helps. But it's not as loud as when I clap with two hands.
What's the sound of one hand clapping? ;-p
It sounds similar to normal clapping but more faint, and lonly and with echo, the damn echo!
I can make double fart sounds by laying on my back and cupping my knee-armpits with both hands.
Not entirely useless though; I showed this to my SO 7 years ago when we started dating and she was clearly impressed as she's still hanging around.
I was worried I was the only one! I can also do elbows, neck, and chest. Also eye sockets but it's not very loud, I'm working on it.
I wish you a great success on your journey towards the eye-socket-fart mastery
Alternating between American and British spellings like it's nothing. I just use whatever spelling I vibe with at the time. I'll do the same with units of measurement as well.
As a a Canadian, I just do this naturally as well.
I can speedwalk very fast and with good stability. It comes in handy when I need to move fast with a glass of liquid, which doesn't come up a lot.
Were you ever in marching band? I got relatively good at that after putting my all into marching band in high school.
I could never spin a pen around my thumb so instead I learned how to "flick" it, have it do a flip and land back in my hand.
I can also rapidly place two strips of tape on one another with no bubbles and parallel enough you'd think it's one piece. However I can only do this vertically
The pen flip/flicking seems like a skill I would love to learn. Do you have a video or know of a video showing or teaching this?
It's possible there is someone or a video who can show you though I came up with it myself in leu of spinning it so I don't personally have any sources.
I can give you a written explanation though!
Step one: Hold the Pen as you normally would
Step two: Get the rubber pen grip (or associated area, roughly 1/3 the length from the tip) onto the knuckle at your finger tip or just in front of it (towards the tip of your finger). This should have your finger in a C position which should put you pretty close to a flick position.
Step 3: Put your thumb in front of the tip of your finger and apply counter pressure between your fingers (ready to flick)
Step 4: Release your restrained middle finger causing your finger to flick and sending the pen up in a flipping motion.
Notable: If the pen flys forward try adjusting how forward or backwards the pen sits on your knuckle (I.E. 1/3, 1/4 etc.). Same if the flip is too speedy or slow.
Adjusting your wrist or moving your hand up to start with some momentum can be useful when learning.
Consistency is hard but you'll get the feel in time
I'm really good at putting sharp objects up my nose (from sideshow)
I can tell what coke was smuggled in with. Recently, bananas.
I won't say "mastered" as I have lost the ability now, but back in college Pokemon endgame content gave me the ability to read braille by looking at it.
That's about as useless as possible.
And yet I’ve always wanted to do that 😅
See also https://xkcd.com/315/
I learned to ride a unicycle.
I’ve wanted to do this but I’m afraid at my age I’ll be seriously injured trying.
I can spew random trivia about every latin american country.
Give me your favorite please!!
There is a taco bell in the historic city of Antigua Guatemala. Guatemala also has like 30 volcanos and their flag is light blue and white with the coat of arms featuring the quetzal bird on it.
I can make baby elephant noises because I played trombone and fucked up my first attempt at lip buzzing
Hand farts, via practice.
Hand sanitizer really opens up avenues for expression.
Hmm hmm hmm hmmmm
A hand fart on land (lhand fart?) is an excellent water gun in the pool with some practice, fyi.
I can't imagine spending the time to master anything and then thinking the skill is useless.
I have an uncanny ability to do things that are unpopular, that later become popular, but I can never imagine them becoming popular when I do them.
Saw Nirvana in a crowd of 30 people before they got famous, certainly never thought they would, it was so different from what was on the radio then. Bought a shirt from them, out of their little van parked in the alley behind the bar!
Used to wear vintage dresses from the thrift store in the 1980s, nobody around me was dressed anything like that, but later all of them got bought up by flippers.
Had tattoos when it was remarkably unusual for a woman, like if another woman with tattoos saw me they would stop and talk to me, I never ever ever would have thought they'd be mainstream.
Lots of stuff like that, like I'm out of synch with time but I can never capitalize on it because I don't have the vision to understand that it will catch on!
You're constantly ahead of your time, without foresight. So you can't seem to capitalize on it - oh well, money ain't everything. You've got experiences no money can buy.
What are some things youve done that have not caught on? What are you into currently?
Gardening in the last few years, sourdough and home fermentation I've done for 15 years or so. I don't really think those will catch on generally because most people don't cook but I will say a few people have asked for some of my starter lately so who knows? Tepache I've been making for years and I just saw some being sold in whole foods, so maybe. But more likely that happened as an offshoot of the Kombucha craze, which I was not a part of. Have been using henna to color my hair for years too, that hasn't exploded in popularity.
I have been late to the party on things too - mobile phones I held out as long as I could, Pokemon Go, late adopter. Electric bike. Fontaines DC.
On the really spooky side though - I had this dining room set from the 1940s, the upholstery tore so I went to the local commercial upholstery shop and found sparkly red vinyl from the state fair rides, reupholstered them (badly) with silver trim.
Couple years later was at Target and they had a reproduction set exactly like my old one - exactly the same chairs, covered in the exact same sparkly red vinyl I'd used. It was precisely like my kitchen table set just better execution. What the actual fuck?
I am better at helping others flesh out ideas and expanding on them than I am making up my own ideas. I'm good at troubleshooting problems better than most I've ever met. I owe both to PC troubleshooting over the last few decades (from Apple 2e and Pentium II to present). I find that people these days have tunnel vision and focus on short-term gains over long-term payoffs, often to the detriment of future productivity.
💪
I can aolve a rubiks cube with my left hand only.
Not your right hand? I Am do it with either, it just takes a long time
I can also do it with my right hand, but i did it with my left first cause there is this german phrase "doing something with left" which means something is so easy for you, you don't even need your dominant hand for it.
I can jump up a small flight of stairs (3-4 stairs) in a way that makes it look like I just floated up the stairs.
I got good at it because in high school I thought it would be funny to be able to do this so I started practicing.
wtf ? I need a video of it
not happening
Procrastinating, i don't know how i became so good at it.
I can tell you, later
I wouldn't say I've mastered it but with my current set up I am as good as I can get with macrophotography.
I can pick up different objects with chopsticks in both hands at the same time. Can also eat this way.
I didn't put any time into mastering this, though. I just gave it a try one day and found it to be easy.
Whistling. Took decades and I can do it two different ways (lips and teeth). I now do it subconsciously when listening to music where I’ll typically add other melodies or harmonies. I can bird call pretty much flawlessly. Loudest I get is over 100dB. Average is low 90s. Not much use but it’s fun.
When you say teeth do you mean like with your tongue on the roof of your mouth/behind front teeth? Or is there something new I can learn?
Whistle like a pidgeon and mourning doves
I can solve a 3x3 rubix cube in under 60 seconds.
Just practice and memorization, it’s not that hard.
Back when I was 15 or so I spent a summer solving one, no guides or resources used. Took me about 3 months and it would take me about 10-20 minutes to solve after I figured it out. I was always proud of that haha
I can palm a tennis ball, roll it down my arm, bump launch it with my bicep, and catch it. Freaks people out who are standing close as the ball launches right at them, but I've always caught it. Discovered later I could do it with anything that rolls like a microphone.
Hmmm, how many things roll like a microphone? That seems very specific.
I was a dj for about 20 years.
This is amazing. I'd love to see this. Probably wouldn't pay, but I'd clap vigorously afterwards.
I learned to open bottles using a lighter, and then taught my friends. After a while, we just started referring to lighters as “bottle openers”.
I know I have plenty but can't for the life of me think of one.
I used to be deadly accurate throwing a paper book of matches. A useless skill even when they were readily available.
I remember reading about a Pa Kua Chang master who could walk through a crowd with a full teacup and not spill any. For whatever reason I started to practice walking with a full to the brim teacup (with or without a handle) and now I can go up and down stairs with one or two and not spill anything. Usually
I can stand on one foot and tie my shoe in the air
I taught myself to balance on one foot by brushing by teeth on one foot for a few months lol
I disagree, I would totally eat those thinking they were some fancy snack
Useless? I feel like you could get some commissions from urban restaurants to put these in their street-facing food displays
My grandma loves miniature everything, especially cute homey things (she has sets for different “rooms”). Whenever I travel anywhere I’m always on the lookout for them cos she’d appreciate these more than the generic city/country souvenir. Always really hard to find though. These look amazing!
엄청난!